Since the 1970s, researchers and practitioners have been interested in the
development of assessment tools for neonates that are predictive of
cognitive status in later infancy and early childhood. The ideal measures
would permit the assessment of abilities at birth, when virtually total
populations of infants are readily accessible in hospitals, and would be
easily administered, cost effective, and accurate in identifying those infants
who are at risk for developmental delays. However, the ideal measures that
satisfy all of these criteria have been difficult to identify. Most typical
approaches to assessment have involved the use of a wide variety of
newborn measures as predictors and a variety of performance measures as
the criterion scores. The newborn and early infancy measures used as
predictors have included measures of perinatal complications (e.g., the
Obstetrical Complications Scale, Littman & Parmelee, 1978), neurological
and behavioral assessments (e.g., the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale, Brazelton, 1973; Prechtl Neurological Examination, Prechtl, 1968), electrophysiological measures of brain functioning (e.g., brainstem-auditory
evoked responses, evoked brain potentials), and measures reflecting attention and tactile abilities. Criterion measures have included scores on scales
such as the Bayley Scales of Infant Development ( Bayley, 1969), the Denver
Developmental Screening Test ( Dunn, 1965), the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale ( Thorndike, Hagen, & Sattler, 1986), and the McCarthy Scales
of Children's Abilities ( McCarthy, 1972).

In the majority of studies that have been published, the amount of
variance accounted for by the predictor variables, alone or in combination,
is low. Since 1990, there has been an increase in the variance accounted for

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